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Summer Food & Wine Festivals in Colorado

From June through the end of September, there’s a food or wine festival almost every single weekend somewhere in Colorado. Plan your travels around one of these delicious events, which almost always include live music, cooking demos and art fairs — as well as the occasional pig race, rubber-duck competition and bocce tournament.

ByColorado.com Staff Writer

Updated: 3/12/2015

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The smell of barbecue takes over the Summit County hub of Frisco at this Kansas City Barbecue Society-sanctioned event, and all who attend are guaranteed to leave with sticky fingers and a full tummy. This perfect Father’s Day event also includes cooking demos, pig races and activities for the kids.

Taste the crème de la crème of epicurean delights at this hugely popular and glamorous event. Taste wine, sample food and learn from some of the world’s more recognizable chefs, all under Aspen’s brilliant alpine skies. This year's speakers include Rick Bayless, Masaharu Morimoto, Jacques Pepin, Andrew Zimmerman and many more. While you're there, check out Whole Journeys three-day hiking and tasting tour.

For serious wine lovers and culinarians, Crested Butte's fest offers the chance to meet winemakers and sommeliers, take a James Beard Celebrity Chef Tour Dinner and attend seminars on artisan cocktail-making and New World vs. Old World wines, all set amid the town's mountain splendor.

Though this festival claims a devotion to wine, organizers of one of Telluride’s longest standing annual events leave plenty of room on the schedule for food. Between the sipping and swilling, festivalgoers attend cooking demonstrations, concerts, decadent meals and seminars led by sommeliers and celebrity chefs.

This event is really about the wine — and tasting it in many of Steamboat’s beautiful summer settings: at the top of the gondola, at the base of the mountain and along the Yampa River. You’ll also have the chance to sample innovative dishes from stellar chefs and attend cooking demonstrations and seminars.

Mesa Verde Country’s Cortez festival focuses on the talent of the locals, with displays by artists inspired by the beauty of southwest Colorado, performances by area musicians, wine from Colorado vintners and meals prepared from products grown and raised nearby.

With the towering Snowmass Mountain as a backdrop, foodies will savor tasting menus and cooking demos from celebrity chefs (including Richard Sandoval, Hosea Rosenberg and Alex Seidel), a juried art exhibit, a performance by blues legend Otis Taylor and specialty-food-and-spirits pairings, which will highlight many liqueurs and liquors that are produced locally.

One of the state’s best-known festivals takes over Denver’s Civic Center Park, with thousands of end-of-summer revelers gathering to taste distinctive Colorado dishes. Tour the state’s menus with samples from more than 50 restaurants, see cooking demonstrations, dance to live music and peruse the masterpieces in 270 booths in the Arts & Crafts Marketplace.

Breckenridge’s quintessential mountain-town Main Street bustles with family-friendly fun during this event, including live music, rubber-duck races, food vendors, an arts-and-crafts fair and, of course, an around-the-world wine festival for the adults set amid the town’s spectacular riverside setting.

Lakewood's Belmar shopping, dining and entertainment district transforms into a Tuscan village with Italian wine and food (including the all-important authentic tiramisu and other tasty desserts), chef demos where you can learn to make your own pesto or Italian sausage, chalk artists, a bocci tournament and a homage to all things Italiano.

This celebration of wine goes right to the source, taking place where much of Colorado’s wine is made — in Palisade. Sample the wares of 56 wineries; meet wine, cheese and peach growers; and talk with painters, ice carvers and chefs. Savor a chocolate-and-port pairing, tour a winery, attend winemaker dinners and even stomp a few grapes.

This event is your best chance to taste of the pride of Pueblo — a special, intensely flavorful variety of green chile. Served smoking on a stick, chopped and tucked into a quesadilla or sprinkled in salsa, it’s the star of this show. Cooking competitions, live music, dancing, arts and crafts, and a farmers’ market round out the festival fun.